In general, a vehicle is provided with a rear view mirror and side view mirrors for ensuring rearward visibility when a vehicle travels, and inclination angles of the rear view mirror and the side view mirrors need to be appropriately adjusted in order to ensure visibility for a driver.
Recently, drivers have preferred an electric mirror of which the inclination angle (posture) may be conveniently adjusted by manipulating buttons rather than a manual mirror of which the inclination angle is adjusted by hand, and the electric mirror requires a mirror actuator for adjusting a posture of the rear view mirror and the side view mirror.
A mirror actuator in the related art includes a housing which accommodates a motor and gears, and an adapter plate which is disposed at an upper side of the housing and rotated relative to the housing by operations of the motor and the gears.
The adapter plate is attached to the side view mirror so as to support the rotation of the side view mirror, and rotates the side view mirror while being rotated by the operations of the motor and the gears, thereby changing the inclination angle of the side view mirror.
An adapter plate 1 in the related art is rotatably fixed at an upper side of a housing (not illustrated). Referring to FIG. 7, a pivot retainer 2 is assembled in a spherical space at a central portion of the adapter plate 1 so as to be rotatable about one axis based on a single axis, a pivot sleeve 3 is assembled to a rotatable shaft of the pivot retainer 2 so as to be rotatable about two axes at a right angle to the rotatable shaft, and in this case, a plate spring 4 and a screw 5 are used to fix the pivot retainer 2 and the pivot sleeve 3.
However, in the mirror actuator in the related art, there are problems in that time required to assemble the mirror actuator is increased because components, which are used to assemble the adapter plate at the upper side of the housing, are assembled in a stacked manner, and vibration is caused by both of the mirror actuator and the plate spring when the mirror actuator and the plate spring are operated to rotate the side view mirror because an assembled structure using the plate spring is affected by the spring constant.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding the background of the inventive concept and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.